Biomedical Engineering Spring 2012 Highlights

The Second Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Research Day took place on March 23rd, 2012 in the Engineering Center at Florida International University.Undergraduate students had the opportunity to share their experience and findings with other students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty and visitors in a judge poster session.  Postdoctoral fellows graded each participant based on the poster display, content, and oral presentation.The first-place award went to Stephanie VanGulden for her work on “The Effects of Steady vs. Pulsatile Flow on Bone Marrow Derived Stem Cells“.

In second place was Karina Bunetska for her work on “Optimizing GFP Transfection: An examination of the effects of DNA/PEI ratios and imaging time in HEK cell lines using fluorescence microscopy.

”Dr. Amir Mirmiran, Dean and Professor, College of Engineering and Computing, presented the award certificates to the winners. The prizes consisted of gift certificates to pay for scientific travel, professional society membership or books.The Department of Biomedical Engineering had the honor to present two distinguished key note speakers:

“The Future of Biomedical Engineering”, Gilda A. Barabino, Ph.D., President of the Biomedical Engineering Society, Professor and Associate Chair for Graduate Studies at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University

“Wallace Coulter: Triumph of a Big Idea”, Susan Racher, M.B.A, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, “The Wallace H. Coulter Foundation

”The event ended with a reception sponsored by the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation BME Distinguished Lecture Series

BME undergraduate research day

L-R) Dr. Anthony McGoron, Dean Mirmiran, first place Stephanie VanGulden, Dr. Gilda Barabino, Ms. Susan Racher and Dr. Ranu Jung

BME undergraduate research day

(L-R) Dr. Anthony McGoron, Dean Mirmiran, second place: Karina Bunetska , Dr. Gilda Barabino, Ms. Susan Racher and Dr. Ranu Jung

BME undergraduate research day

Distinguished Key Note Speakers: Gilda Barabino, PhD, Susan Racher, MBA and BME Department Chair and Professor Dr. Ranu Jung listened to student Andres Pena’s poster presentation.